


the feeling's gone

by Rosse



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, FWB-ish, Friendship, Gen, i needed pure tragedy, i've written nothing but fluff and stupidity lately, not that it's relevant really, yeah this is just angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 14:12:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5251151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosse/pseuds/Rosse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which I write traumatic fic while drinking wine. Un-beta'd as hell.</p><p>prompt: “You're trying to get yourself killed! Ever since it happened, you've been trying!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the feeling's gone

It's Carl who finds her, dazed and covered in blood, corpses strewn at her feet and a heart convulsing in her hand. She doesn't react to the sound of him dropping from the rooftop, just sways on the spot with glazed over brown eyes – her sunglasses are nowhere to be seen – as the heart stills and falls out of her grasp. The stench of blood fills the air in the alleyway, drifting out to the streets beyond. He swallows back the saliva that builds in his mouth and pushes all thoughts of it to the back of his mind. Not right now.

(It stinks-)

He doesn't take the time to look at the faces of her victims, steps over them instead. “Hey,” he barks, eyes boring intently into her vacant expression. His hands linger in the space between them, half-raised to grab her shoulders and shake her back into the present day, but there's dried blood browning in her pink hair and it's all he can see now. “Kate.”

Her name stirs something, a slow shift of her posture, an echo winding its way through a deep valley. Her eyes focus, attention drawn to the blue tie he wears and Carl lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. She's back, and she's yet to notice the blood that soaks her body and the pavement and his shoes and fucking _everything_ because what the hell, Kate?

“You alri--” She doubles over and vomits before he gets the question out. Carl's eyes water as the rancid stink of vomit mates with the metallic bite of the blood, twisting into something ever worse. “C'mon, let's get home.”

He grabs her arm and dematerialises before she can protest.

 

It takes Kate two hours to come out of the shower, two hours of Carl pretending he doesn't hear the shuddering gasps and heaving over the running water which – he knows, when he tries to wash his hands – turns cold fifteen minutes in.

When she comes out, wrapped in a towel that's two shades greyer than it used to be, her face is drained of all colour and her eyes return to that unfocused glaze from before, staring off at some distant memory.

“Hey, Katydid, sit down,” he says, pushing away the blanket strewn over the other half of the couch. She moves – plods, really, in a way that wouldn't even suit her at her most tired – with heavy limbs and dripping hair. “What did you find out?” Carl probes, voice a light whisper in the empty cavern of his apartment. She can ignore it if she wants, but instead, Kate pulls her legs up on the couch and stares pointedly at the television – broken for about three months now, but Carl doesn't have the money or time to waste on an electrician -, her arms woven between and around her calves and chin pressed up against her knees.

“I don't remember,” she answers, all clear and slow words and Carl tries not to start at the way she enunciates things, the way her words don't blur into one. “They rambled. A lot. I don't think any of it was important. Or relevant.” He hears each breath and pause, they jump out unnaturally and harshly. It all sounds so wrong, so unfamiliar.

“Great,” he breathes, eyes rolling. “We have nothing, then.” She shrugs her shoulders up to her ears and says nothing more.

 

For three hours – he counts, watching the clock instead of Kate and her frozen pose – they sit in silence, with nothing but the muffled shrieks and screams of drunken students as they pass by the building in search of taxis for noise. He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth and rolls his head back, listening to the crack of bones as it moves from shoulder to shoulder. “How long has it been now?”

“Two weeks,” she answers immediately, eyes trained on the television as if she expects it to spring to life any moment now. Carl finally drags his eyes over to her, running a palm over the stubble on his cheek. Her hair falls limply, perfectly clean and still damp, over her shoulders, leaving pink stains on the dirty old towel that barely remains wrapped around her. Her fingernails digging into the skin of her calves, leaving pink dents against pale skin. Her hands stand stark against her calves, far more tanned than they are, the evidence of endless days out in the sun, running across rooftops without care for protection. Her hands, her face and neck, all so dark they nearly match his natural, Mediterranean colouring – deep and golden.

“You've got to snap out of it,” he finally says, pulling his eyes from the expanse of the pale, scarred skin of her legs up to her face. “We can't keep saving you.” Yesterday, Diana wept for two hours on the phone, drained of all her energy and light after dragging Kate out of a five on one fight and back to Alicia's apartment.

“What are you _talking_ about?”

“You're trying to get yourself killed! Ever since Marc died, you've been trying!” The words tumble out of his mouth before he has a chance to think them over, to reword them more tactfully, because with Kate, with Kate and Marc - because God knows the guy is a constant shadow over her existence, even when he's dead – it's all about wording things correctly. You're not co-dependent, you're best friends. Years upon years of enabling this shit, and finally it's all come crashing down.

(It's a shame he had to die for it to happen.)

Kate turns her head to him and stares, dead-eyed stares into his eyes. “I know.” She doesn't cry, she never cries – not even Marc had seen that – but her expression freezes, blank like black ice on the roads, inscrutable and dangerous. “What else am I supposed to do?”

His lips seal shut. He doesn't have an answer for that.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, there's no resolution. This is really just a short scene from an original verse I've been playing around with and doing writing exercises with for years.


End file.
